Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Google have today unveiled Bird's Eye view in Google Maps only Google are calling it 'Aerial View'. Aerial View allows map developers to show satellite imagery from north, south, east and west perspectives. The imagery is only available through the Google Maps API and so far is only available for San Jose and San Diego, California. However Google will be increasing the amount of imagery over the coming months.

As Mickey Mellen has pointed out on the Google Earth Blog the new Aerial View imagery seems to be the same imagery used in Google's Building Maker tool. Esa has created a nice list of cities around the world that have Aerial View imagery in Building Maker. You can view the list on the Google Maps Discussion Group.

Here is a simple example of Aerial View in action (spin the compass in the top left corner to change perspective).

You can learn more about how you can add Google's Aerial Imagery and the map type collections by taking a looking at the concepts, reference and examples.